Best and worst films of 2019

The good news is that there were a lot of good films out in 2019. The bad news is that seeing those films in a cinema just keeps on getting harder. It’s not even a secret that Disney would really prefer it if cinemas just showed Disney movies, which would seem hilarious except that they had a bunch of the biggest movies of the year and bought Fox studios; when Joker making a billion dollars is a sign of hope, you know we’re in a dark place.

As is usually the way these days, the superhero movies grabbed all the attention despite rarely deserving it (Shazam! was probably the best of the bunch; Avengers: Endgame mostly just felt like an end), while the other big money makers were often films that just kept on quietly raking in the cash like Aladdin or Rocketman. At least the idea of coming back after years with “all new” sequels in an attempt to revive long dead franchises seems to have died yet again, even if Terminator: Dark Fate was nowhere near the worst Terminator movie this century.

Worst films of 2019 (in no particular order)

There’s always more bad films than good in a year, but usually they’re just bad in a way that’s sad rather than rage-inducing. What was notable this year was the sheer number of bad films that didn’t even care about being good; while a couple of these films stunk because of obvious mistakes they really shouldn’t have made, or were just the last gasp of a series that had run out of steam a movie or two earlier, some just set out to be as firmly average and bland as they could be whatever the subject matter or possible potential.

(there’s four horror movies on this list because a horror movie only has one job: be scary. If you don’t want to do that, make something else)

*Doctor Sleep

*MiB: International

*Black Christmas

*The Lion King

*Pet Sematary

*It Chapter 2

*King of Thieves

*Ride Like a Girl
*Poms

*Judy & Punch

Best films of 2019 (in no particular order)

This really was a good year for film; I’d take pretty much any one of these films over anything in my top ten list for last year. And Rambo: Last Blood didn’t even make the top ten! It was a pretty good year for films I didn’t see in cinemas too: Netflix’s Marriage Story is great, and if Scott Adkins’ movie Avengement had made it to cinemas here it definitely would have been on this list.

Also I should stress I haven’t yet seen Cats, so obviously this top ten list is provisional at best.

*Toy Story 4

*Parasite

*Once Upon a Time in Hollywood

*John Wick 3

*Ready or Not

*The Irishman

*Pain and Glory

*The Report

*Portrait of a Lady on Fire

*Little Women

The Edge of Criticism: Cats and Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker

Most of us have some idea of what to expect when we go to see a movie. Sometimes this works against us; expect too much and you're set up for disappointment. But what if we want a movie to fail? What if the whole point is to laugh at something that's shit, or to feel smug that we never fell for the suckers game of liking something that was bound to let you down?

Much as film critics - critics of any kind, really - like to think the best of their profession, their profession is like any other in the 21st century: if you don't give the people what they want, they'll go elsewhere. It's perfectly possible to have a career (or what currently passes for a career in film criticism, which largely involves having a moderately high twitter follower count) based entirely on being contrary, but being "the reviewer you love to hate" has its risks at a time when fans aren't particularly inclined to embrace contrary views. Swim against the tide and the sharks will come for you.

For critics who rely on being in tune with what the public wants to hear to keep their job (or their social media profiles), reviewing is largely a case of getting in first and being just vaguely positive or negative enough that if the consensus changes dramatically they can shift with it to remain "part of the conversation".

Count up all the online reviews (tweets) that talk about how they felt one way towards a film at first but the more they think about it, the more they feel a different way; there's nothing wrong with changing your mind, but you have to have made it up in the first place.

So a film like Cats is sweet, blessed relief, because everyone knew (based on a trailer and some costume shots) that it was going to be bad. The only question was, how bad was it going to be? Which means the real question was "how attention-grabbingly over-the-top can my review be?"

This type of already decided train-wreck is a rare opportunity for a reviewer to break out from the pack and make a name for themselves if their ghastly hate-take is savage or vicious enough to go viral when "just how bad is Cats?" becomes a mainstream news story. Loads of people you've never heard of weren't going to let this chance go to waste.

That's not to say Cats is a good film. There are plenty of completely reasonable attempts by critics and reviewers to come to grips with its weird sexual energy, bizarre non-story and wacky hambone performances. But because of the way criticism "works" in the 21st century, having a high profile film that's safe to slag off means a lot of people left the reality of the film far, far behind in an attempt to keep the focus firmly on themselves. Maybe stick to critics you trust for this one.

Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker is the flip side of this dynamic. Whereas the Cats reviews are often openly mocking or incredulous - as if an adaptation of a massively successful stage show suddenly appeared out of nowhere with no warning - Skywalker has largely received careful, nuanced reviews, liberally scattered with spoiler warnings to reassure fans they're not finding out anything they may not want to know.

(this is especially hilarious as the film repeatedly delivers what is supposed to be massive plot points - and by plot points I mean the literal deaths of main characters - only to walk them back, at times within the same scene. How do you spoiler a warning a film where nothing means anything and everything is an increasingly desperate attempt to shock a reaction out of a jaded audience?)

Star Wars, of course, has a large and active fanbase who are increasingly committed to complaining about anything that doesn't meet their standards of what a kids raygun adventure serial should deliver. And with that power comes, well, power; while the opportunities to be openly mocking or incredulous of Skywalker aren't exactly short on the ground - even for a Star Wars movie it's not particularly coherent - for the most part in reviews its flaws are glossed over or concealed as a spoiler even as a vague sense of disappointment comes through.

In the world of film culture where critics reside, Cats is friendless and an easy target; Star Wars is a heavy hitter nobody wants to cross. So Cats is criticised for silly costumes and bizarre sets; have you seen the outfits in the Star Wars movies? Cats is fair game because it barely has a story; people wonder aloud whether it's a spoiler to reveal that Skywalker starts off with the announcement out of nowhere that a character who died in a movie 35 years ago and has never been mentioned in this series is suddenly back and will take over the galaxy within days.

The thing is, neither of these films are unwatchable, and judged by their own standards they're far from disasters. But nobody wants to hear that Cats is just weird and strange (like the stage show) when the greenlight to beat it up is shining strong; Skywalker has to be taken seriously and treated with respect, even though the best way to enjoy it is as utterly disposable pap where nothing means anything.

Once the initial rush of publicity passes and being "part of the conversation" is no longer a chance to get noticed, maybe reviewers and critics will talk about these films free of the hype. More likely they'll move onto the next high profile film and try the same thing all over again. Is Clint Eastwood #cancelled yet?

- Anthony Morris

Review: Black Christmas

It’s the holiday season, and most of the students are heading home from Hawthorne College. Unfortunately, some of them will be heading home in a body bag thanks to a mysterious cloaked maniac. Sounds like a generic slasher story? Maybe because the original Black Christmas pretty much invented the slash genre? 

You wish; this (third) remake of the classic horror film has found the one ingredient guaranteed to turn a mildly creepy film into sure-fire nightmare fodder: loads and loads of one-sided and sophomoric discussions about sexism and the patriarchy.

Okay, there is a small amount of showing mixed in with all the telling, as Riley Stone (Imogen Poots) and her friends plan to get payback on a creepy frat (one member sexually attacked Riley a few years ago and got away with it)  just as the aforementioned masked slasher is murdering women one by one.

Come to think of it, it's hard to be sure at times that these women are actually being murdered, as the film constantly cuts away from their possibly brutal deaths before even the slightest amount of gore can been seen. In fact, there's a weird post-murder scene at one point where we're shown a corpse just dumped on a balcony in broad daylight, presumably to confirm that the woman actually was killed, which we need to know because of Plot Reasons.

Anyway, the suspect list is fairly lengthy, and yes I'm joking because this is a movie that features multiple scenes discussing how all frat boys are rapists so obviously the frat is involved. What about a misogynistic professor (Cary Elwes)? Sure, why not. And the sinister bust of the College's founder? Yeah, go nuts. Especially as none of this makes any sense whatsoever.

Which is not usually a problem in horror movies, but the slasher side of things here is straightforward and uninspired, especially as the (clearly edited) kills themselves are largely bloodless. Exactly why this story had to be told as a slasher film is up for debate - and these characters love a good debate - as the generic stalk and slash scenes and muddled supernatural element make it clear that the film-maker's passion lies elsewhere.

That's frustrating, because when the film-makers are engaged this actually does have a fair bit to offer. Riley's trauma is well handled, the blunt way this confronts campus rape culture has real force, and the women's (initial, comedic) revenge on the frat hits home surprisingly hard. What this feels like is a decent short film about a group of young women taking back their power after one of them was abused and the school did nothing, only with a whole lot of half-hearted slasher stuff wrapped around it.

Men don't come out of this well, but it's hardly man-hating; all the female characters (outside of Riley) are just as preachy and one dimensional. One of the women spends the entire movie lecturing everyone around her, (she even gets to say "did you just 'not all men' me?" to one of her friend's boyfriends; the slasher then kills him) - including telling Riley she's not dealing with her trauma the right way (by fighting back). 

Instead of getting it in the neck, she turns out to be so right about everything even Riley tells her "you were right to constantly nag and lecture me, an abuse survivor, for not doing things the right way which is obviously your way". Only with slightly less words.

A horror movie where you want everyone to die isn't really doing its job; a horror movie where you can't even tell who's actually died is somehow even worse. There's a thousand horrific stories to be told about the patriarchy, but this isn't any of them. It's not even a decent Christmas movie! Go watch Silent Night, Deadly Night instead.

- Anthony Morris

-->

Frozen II and Knives Out double feature

 Nobody expected the first Frozen to be as big a hit as it became. Which explains (in part) why this sequel at times feels a bit tentative: when a film becomes a surprise hit, it’s hard to figure out exactly what it is that audiences are responding to. 

Obviously the relationship between out-of-place and superpowered Elsa (Idina Menzel) and her feisty and devoted younger sister Anna (Kristen Bell) was central, and so it is again; living snowman Olaf (Josh Gad) was a big laugh-getter for the kids and so he’s stumbling around again. As for Kristoff (Jonathan Groff), the film makes his why-exactly-am-I-here? status a plus, as he struggles to propose to Anna while wondering if a relationship is even what he really wants (inspiring the film's best song). 

But the story itself is a bit of a mish-mash, tying the origin of Elsa’s powers (which aren’t really explained anyway) in with her kingdom’s unsurprisingly dark colonist past in a way that works reasonably well as a story but still comes off as a bit hollow thanks to some fuzzy motivation and muddled plot points. 

On the plus side it looks great, the songs are strong (if not particularly memorable), and the central female friendship gives the film real heart. It’s a solid enough sequel – just not an equal to the original.

Cosy murder mysteries have been a television thing for so long now that even after the recent success of the Murder on the Orient Express remake this twist on / salute to the genre still feels like a bit of a risk. Which is part of the point: Knives Out starts out as your typical whodunnit before throwing in enough fresh twists of its own that the real fun isn’t trying to figure out what’s going on but just sitting back and enjoying the ride. 

The set-up is classic rather than clever: when a wealthy author (Christopher Plummer) dies (an apparent suicide), his venal children start circling, only to find that a quirky detective (Daniel Craig) and the dead man’s good-hearted nurse (Ana de Armas) are standing between them and his estate. 

Much of the satisfaction here – aside from a smart but not smug sense of humour and a first-class run of excellent performances (the kids include Jamie Lee Curtis, Michael Shannon and Chris Evans) – comes from the way this piles on the twists without ever cheating or getting post-modern: even at its most convoluted the story is constantly moving forward rather than serving up new information via flashbacks (until it’s time to solve the mystery, of course). 

Even if you don't like mysteries (that would be me), it’s a thoroughly engaging and entertaining ride.

- Anthony Morris

Review: Official Secrets

                       

It’s the season for revisiting the lies and cover-ups around the Iraq War, as this (coming on the heels of The Report) tells another true story of governmental deceit, this time from the UK side of things. Which, as it turns out, is just as sinister and blood-thirsty as everyone else.

It’s 2003, and Katharine Gun (Kiera Knightly) works as at GCHQ as basically an government eavesdropper, going through bugged conversations for useful information. But when she gets a US memo asking for blackmail material to swing an upcoming UN vote to make the seemingly inevitable Iraq War legal she turns whistleblower, leaking it to a friend who eventually gets it to the press. 

This, as you might expect, does not impress the government, and soon she’s right in their sights. There's something satisfyingly sinister about watching the UK establishment gearing up to crush a prole, and soon the traditional mix of bovver-boy cops and toffee-voiced lawyers are looming ominously over Katharine, with her marriage to a recent immigrant in their sights.

As with The Report, a big-name cast gives this straightforward story star power, with Matt Smith, Matthew Goode and Rhys Ifans playing journalists trying to verify the leaked memo, Jeremy Northam and Tasmin Grieg as members of the establishment, and Ralph Fiennes as the big gun lawyer Katharine finally finds herself needing. 

The story gradually expands beyond Katharine but she remains central to it, with Knightly’s performance – veering between all-too-human worry and a firm determination – keeping things on a human scale. 

It’s a compelling, at times (justifiably) infuriating, watch.

- Anthony Morris

Charlies Angels and Ford v Ferrari double feature

This latest reboot of the tried-and-true 70s concept is a salute to how resilient that concept actually is: most franchises (cough Terminator cough) would start flailing after a failed TV series, a shoddy video game and a second movie in 2003 that killed off most peoples’ desire for a third. 

Writer-director-star Elizabeth Banks makes this sequel (mostly) work by keeping it simple and (relatively) low key - not having the budget of a big blockbuster probably helped there. The story largely sticks to the basics: when scientist Elena (Naomi Scott) uncovers a way her company’s big invention (some kind of battery) can be turned into a weapon, she also discovers her bosses don’t seem to care. 

Enter Charlies Angels – well, two of them (it’s now a global organisation), as loose cannon Sabina (Kristen Stewart) and former MI6 agent Jane (Ella Balinska) lead the investigation, only to discover things are a lot more deadly at the power company than they first seemed. 

As an organisation, Charlies Angels itself might be bigger – there are at least three featured Bosleys (Patrick Stewart, Banks and Djimon Hounsou) – but the action sequences rely more on choppy editing than big explosions, which puts the focus firmly on the characters and a consistent if occasionally clunky female empowerment message. It’s a largely satisfying yet forgettable addition to the franchise.

To get the basics out of the way: Ford v Ferrari's gearhead take on the battle to win the 1966 24 hour race at Le Mans is a thoroughly satisfying mix of character study and racetrack action.

Director James Mangold wrings tension out of car design details and corporate powerplays while leads Carroll Shelby (Matt Damon, often in a cowboy hat) and Ken Miles (Christian Bale, using his natural UK accent) winningly just want to be left alone to enjoy the thrills of car racing. 

So on that level, it gets just about everything right; it’s a totally entertaining film for the dad and the dad at heart. 

But this is also a film that sets itself up as the underdog versus the big guns… only smug corporate Ford is positioned as the underdog and Ferrari (a company that starts the film out bankrupt) are the big guns. 

The facts of the story – well, the facts so obvious the film can’t ignore them – is that the petulant entitled son of Henry Ford threw cash (of which he had plenty) at the PR problem of winning Le Mans, then managed to largely screw over the people who did the real work. 

It’s a feel-bad story buried just under the surface, and it leave a scratch in this film’s otherwise immaculate paintwork.

- Anthony Morris

Review: Doctor Sleep

Doctor Sleep is a lot of things – a sequel, a possible first installment in a new franchise, a chance for Stephen King to get one last kick into the movie version of The Shining and reclaim it as his own – but is it a horror movie?  Obvious it contains scary stuff - kids are murders by supernatural forces, so good news there for It fans - but that in itself doesn't make a movie scary. As shown by the second half of It, for starters.

 

So there answer here is "no, not really". Yes, the story does involve a band of soul-sucking almost-vampires who feed off what we know as “The Shining”, and the now grown-up Danny Torrance (Ewan McGregor) does face down a bunch of ghosts both literal and metaphorical. 

 

But for long stretches this film seems more interested in just hanging out with its cast as the bad guys – led by Rose the Hat (Rebecca Ferguson) - slowly circle in on Abra Stone (Kyliegh Curran), a young girl with a Shining stronger than anyone’s seen. Which rapidly makes her a decent match for the monsters, and when the good guys and bad guys are evenly matched what you've got isn't really all that horrific.

 

Most of the really interesting stuff here involves Danny’s battle with the bottle and his father’s drunken legacy; the monster stuff at times feels like the set up for a so-so series on Netflix. Horror buffs of a certain age might remember when Clive Barker's Nightbreed was considered (mostly by Barker himself) to be radical for treating the monsters as characters; these days it's hard to find a monster movie that doesn't, even if that almost always makes them a lot less scary.

 

Eventually the chase finds its way back to the Overlook Hotel from The Shining, and this kicks into a very different gear. It's not exactly a good sign that this only gets creepy when it starts directly ripping off Kubrick, but the differing effects are more a result of differing approaches than outright theft. 

 

For most of this film we're basically being told an fairly straightforward story in a fairly straightforward way (though there are a few nice moments when various supernatural powers are being used). But the scenes at the Overlook are largely concerned with creating mood and tension (the story being pretty much over). They're the first time this starts acting like a movie rather than a television serial, and the difference is startling.

Ironically, mood and tension are what make Stephen King's horror writing work, and they're almost always the first things discarded when adapting it for the screen. Kubrick's film may not have been a faithful adaptation, but it's still the only King adaptation to date (well, horror adaptation at least) to focus on what makes horror in general work: mood and tension. 

 

Being too literal is what ruins most adaptations; not being literal enough is why King's hated Kubrick's version all these years. Dr Sleep splits the difference, and doesn't really leave any mark at all.

- Anthony Morris

Review: Terminator: Dark Fate

As a rule, the less time a Terminator movie gives you to think about what’s going on, the better a Terminator movie it is. The first one has enough going on for half a dozen regular movies (why we never got a buddy cop series with cops Traxler and Vukovich is a mystery); every one since then has left something out and has suffered for it.

The good news is, Dark Fate is the first installment since Terminator 2: Judgment Day to fully embrace the series’ origins as an all-out chase movie, which also makes it the best installment since T2. Yes, that's a low bar to hurdle (and most of the other sequels have their good points); perhaps it's better to say it's the most cohesive Terminator film since the second one.

This story begins with John Connor (back briefly in CGI form) gunned down as a teenager so now the post-T2 sequels never happened and a distraught Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton) is still killing Terminators in her early-60s. So you know, win-win for everyone but John Connor.

Otherwise it’s the same deal as usual as Mexico City resident Dani (Natalia Reyes) has been targeted for termination by a Rev-9 model (Gabriel Luna) from the future, with only the mostly human time-traveller Grace (Mackenzie Davis) to protect her. Which is exactly the same dynamic from the first two films and honestly, how much you'll enjoy this depends in large part on how played out you think that dynamic is.

Fortunately director Tim Miller (Deadpool) does a good job with the lengthy action sequences - which you'd think would be the first thing a Terminator movie would get right, but there's a couple of sequels out there that prove that theory wrong - the performances are strong across the board (cranky old Sarah Connor is fun), and while the story isn’t remotely original it still works. 

As does the T-800 model Terminator (Arnold Schwarzenegger); he’s now a plaid-clad robot dad but his one-liners still kill. It's slightly surprising that a franchise originally built around the awesome spectacle of the human body jacked up to almost ridiculous extremes has become perhaps the foremost cinematic chronicle of one body's age-related decline and decay, but if you're a fan of increasingly complicated explanations for why a Terminator would get old and change his ways this one has a doozy.

- Anthony Morris

Review: Blinded by the Light

It’s a tale as old as time; a young man, feeling alienated from his community and cut off from his family’s conservative values, finds an escape and a way to express his true self in music. It's what music is for - well, that and dancing about, which is currently frowned upon in cinemas.

The twist here is that it’s 1987 Luton and Javed (Viveik Kalra) is a British-Pakistani teenager who discovers freedom in pretty much the most unlikely source imaginable (for him): the then somewhat daggy music of Bruce Springsteen. 

Based on the true story of UK journalist Sarfraz Manzoor, this follows his struggles against entrenched racism, a domineering (yet caring) father (Kulvinder Ghir), and a society that sees Springsteen as yesterday’s man (some of this movie’s best jokes come when Javed’s passion butts up against the reality that in 1987 The Boss is now seen as past it). 

The story hits all the traditional notes, but the family struggles often have an authentically harsh edge to them (the racism they face is not soft-pedalled) and Javed’s connection to the mood of Springsteen’s music feels thrillingly hard-won. 

As the latest in the current cycle of jukebox musicals, this leans more on the music’s message than pumping out a series of toe-tapping beats – though there’s one big musical number on Luton’s streets that’s authentically joyful – and after the gritty drama a heartwarming ending feels satisfyingly deserved. 

- Anthony Morris

-->

Zombieland: Double Tap and Maleficent: all-sequel Double Feature

It’s been a decade since the wise-cracking zombie slayers of Zombieland burst onto our screens making meta-references aplenty while gunning down the undead - but cool murders are old news now and having these guys back years after everyone stopped caring is a bit of a mixed blessing. 

On the one hand, after a decade the world of zombie-comedy has moved on and simply being snappily dressed badasses (shout out to Woody Harrelson's Man With No Name cosplay at the film's beginning) with a bunch of comedy rules isn’t really all that distinctive. On the other, it wasn’t all that distinctive even back then and as this is basically just rehashing the same old jokes, having a decade pass since we last heard them isn’t such a bad thing. 

Having moved into the remains of the White House, our ad hoc family – Tallahassee (Woody Harrelson), Columbus (Jesse Eisenberg), Wichita (Emma Stone) and Little Rock (Abigail Breslin) – are falling into a rut, The solution: the gals bail, leaving Columbus bereft and Tallahassee looking for the exit himself. 

Things get slightly more complicated with the discovery of airhead survivor Madison (Zoey Deutch) and the news that Little Rock has run off with (shudder) a hippie, but what follows is just another road trip movie with a few decent jokes and some gory zombie-killing along the way. 

The jokes are rarely hilarious but they're not painful either and the zombie gore is occasionally nasty enough to get a reaction even in 2019. But it's the chemistry between the cast (two-thirds of which barely seem to be trying to give a performance) that makes this work, even if it's just on the level of a hangout movie; imagine what they could do in a film that actually had something to say.

Maleficent: Mistress of Evil begins with the news that the previous film’s happy ending didn’t stick: Maleficent (Angelina Jolie) is still feared and hated, even though the human Princess (and her goddaughter) Aurora (Elle Fanning) now rules the fairy kingdom. 

In fact, she’s about to marry Prince Phillip (Harris Dickinson), which you’d think would cement the bond between the humans and faeries and turn Maleficent into a kind of grumpy aunt figure. But no: Phillip’s mother Queen Ingrith (Michelle Pfeiffer) has other plans which largely involve a surprisingly distressing amount of murder. 

For such a straightforward story this seems overstuffed with incidents in a way that usually suggests a tortured screenwriting process; for one, it seems Maleficent is part of an entire ecosystem of flying humans who add almost nothing to the story but do make for good cannon fodder during the lengthy battle sequence at the climax. 

Also, and this can't be stressed enough, this is a film that's largely about the wholesale slaughter of every fairy Ingrith's sinister forces can lure into a trap (though the trap does involves some over-the-top organ playing, so it's not all bad news). This probably isn't aimed at little kids, but if they do wander in they might be a little distressed by some of this.

Presumably the creative team thought that the only way Maleficent could look (relatively) good was by making the humans into crazed mass murderers, which suggests perhaps the whole idea of this sequel was somewhat flawed. Wasn't the fun of Maleficent that she was a baddie who didn't really give a crap?

At least Jolie gets a handful of opportunities to be arch and bitchy which are easily the best part of the film; her slightly feral performance throughout suggests an actor putting more thought into her character than the script did. Pfeiffer also does some (slightly more subdued) scenery chewing and a bunch of CGI creatures get to look cute. 

Even for a film as jumbled as this one, the big mystery here is exactly why a fairy tale movie needed to go full-on war movie by the end - unless they had a bunch of Star Wars CGI animators handy with nothing better to do. Considering the potential much of this film shows, they still should have had something better to do than another big battle sequence.

- Anthony Morris

 

-->
-->

Hustlers and Gemini Man: double feature

For a movie that’s technically about a group of ex-strippers who made a lot of money from drugging guys and charging up their credit cards, Hustlers takes a long time to get around to the drugging and robbing. 

 

That’s because this film isn’t really about that at all; partly it’s about “can people form human connections in a world where every relationship has become commodified?”, and partly it’s about “can you ever have too many shopping scenes and strut montages set to 2010-era bangers?” (the answers are yes and no).

 

Destiny (Constance Wu) is the “new girl” dancer at a New York strip club, while Ramona (Jennifer Lopez) is the experienced elder stateswoman who takes her under her wing. There's money to be made and they're going to make it - preferably while looking good doing it. What comes next follows the Goodfellas template of true-crime stories: good times up front, then eventually you have to pay the price.

 

Only here the good times just keep on coming and the whole “price-paying” thing is covered in a handful of scenes that don’t quite say horny drunk guys deserve to be drugged and robbed, but

do say that if these girls didn’t do it someone else would and these guys pretty much did deserve it anyway. The real twist here is that the crime crew actually seem to like each other: what's at stake isn't their ill-gotten gains, but the friends they made along the way.

 

The whole thing is a good time so long as you don’t think about it too much, and why should you? There’s always more handbags to buy.

 

Occasionally Hollywood serves up a movie that only exists because someone wanted to try out a cool new toy. Usually they bomb, which is possibly why Gemini Man sees Ang Lee trying out two (and a half if you count the 3D) new toys at once: it was filmed at a high frame rate (60 frames per second rather than the usual 24), and it features an all-digital version of a young Will Smith.

 

Surprisingly, both of those elements largely work. The high frame rate (at least when combined with the 3D) gives the action scenes an effective immediacy – especially in an early, lethal game of hide and seek where being able to see with crystal clarity every corner of the frame is really useful. 

 

The digital Smith is also (mostly) plausible and believable, though his actual acting (supplied by older Smith via motion capture) largely hovers around the "tormented and sulking" end of the scale and isn’t anything to get excited about. Unfortunately neither is the actual story, which is an utterly generic and uninspiring spy thriller that would have worked just as well (which is to say, not very well at all) if Smith’s character was being hunted by his son rather than his clone. 

 

But then this movie would have absolutely no reason to exist; as it stands, unless you're really into the technical side of film-making, it just has no reason for you to see it.

 

- Anthony Morris

Review: Joker

Is Joker a hollow attempt at provocative posing designed to placate sad sack manbabies by telling them that their grievances against the world have mythic status, or is it a film that actually has something to say about the way neglect of the unfortunate and the underclass can fan the flames of social unrest? Here's an idea; why can't it be both? It'd be only fitting for a film about the Joker - a character so flexible in comic book form that he's been everything from generic gimmick villain to Clown Prince of Crime to demonic force that lives on after death - to be multiple things at once.

Not that the Joker really needs an origin story. There's no real way to get from a recognisable human being to the supervillain we all know and love (aside from Tim Burton's first Batman, but that was Jack Nicholson from beginning to end) and this doesn't even really try to reach that particular end point. This is the story of a regular, if disadvantaged, guy who eventually just gives up and decides to get violent; King of Comedy is the Scorsese film everyone's pointing towards as a touchstone but director Todd Phillips has put a heck of a lot of Taxi Driver in here too.

Sub-par party clown Arthur Fleck (Joaquin Phoenix) is struggling in early 80s Gotham City. He's bad at his job, he has a mental issue that causes him to burst out in inappropriate laughter, his dreams of being a stand-up comic aren't exactly supported by his performances, and as the city increasingly teeters on the edge of chaos his problems only get worse. But that only puts him ahead of the curve; after an impromptu act of vigilante violence makes him - well, the clown that people saw - a symbol of the building anger against the crumbling status quo, the question is, will this beat-down "Joker" cast aside any sense of right and wrong he once had and seize the day?

With the Scorsese influence loud and clear early on, and a lot of the actual Joker material lifted from the comics (between this and Batman vs Superman, about 80% of Frank Miller's classic The Dark Knight Returns comic has made its way onto the screen) and earlier films, this occasionally feels like a greatest hits compilation of elements from an earlier age this film is trying to transport across to the new, superhero-only era of cinema. But that's not automatically a bad thing.

For one, seeing a superhero movie commit so hard to realism - or at least, a heightened realism that stresses the grimy, physical side of things 70s cinema style - is something new. DC at the movies has constantly been looking to find a way to counter the slick family-friendly flash of Marvel / Disney (in much the same way as in the mid 80s DC Comics managed to break Marvel's X-Men led death grip on the comics industry with "grim & gritty" deconstructions of the superhero such as Watchmen and The Dark Knight Returns), and this is definitely their most concerted push in that direction yet.

So Marvel couldn't make this movie; would they even want to? The DC Comic plan worked in the 80s because audiences were growing up and flashy superhero soap operas suddenly felt childish compared to serious takes on costumed characters. These days the idea of "growing up" as far as entertainment choices go is openly mocked; anything without a core of relentless optimism is considered too dark for our dark times. Entertainment, it seems, shouldn't reflect what's going on, it should be an escape from it, because reflecting whats going on only encourages the people who see themselves reflected.

On the other hand, Marvel is just fine with Captain Marvel basically being a hoo-rah commercial for the US military, so exactly where you come down on a movie showing people rioting in the streets because their wealthy leaders are openly mocking them for being poor really depends in part on what kind of power fantasies you want to indulge. If you want to dismiss this film as just edgelord posturing, fine (though you'll have to overlook Robert DeNiro's talkshow character, who delivers an impassioned lecture directly to Fleck on how everything he represents is entitled self-pitying whining) but every superhero movie is pandering to some kind of power fantasy, and many of them are just as distasteful as Joker's - if often more acceptably presented.

If anything, the problem here is that Joker doesn't go far enough. A populist uprising against an oppressive and unrepresentative government is presented as a bad thing, something for an anarchist supervillain - and while this film may initially side with Fleck, there's no denying that eventually our sympathies are expected to drain away - to revel in. A core problem of Batman's dynamic is that a billionaire who solves crime by punching muggers is the good guy; making this particular Joker the face of a seemingly justified working class uprising really doubles down on that.

Still, there's much to enjoy here on a purely cinematic level. The sense of building chaos as Fleck's life spirals downhill is compelling even when the occasional scene or reveal falls flat, the urban grime is atmospheric, the (occasional, nasty) violence actually has weight to it, and any film that might possibly send viewers back to The King of Comedy is definitely doing something right.

Phoenix's performance is what makes this film work. Aggressively grounded in the physical in a way that CGI-heavy superhero movies almost never are, he squirms and writhes through much of the film, and when he breaks out into dance (as he does surprisingly often), its defiant strangeness lifts the film to a whole new level. It suggests an otherness that's new to this (cinematic) version of the Joker, a music only he can hear - even if in the end the tune turns out to be one we've heard before.

- Anthony Morris

Double feature: Ride Like a Girl & Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark

  

Ride Like a Girl's retelling of the Michelle Payne story only asks one thing of its audience: that they have no questions at all about why someone would constantly risk their life riding racehorses under bad conditions and with worse pay. While this covers all the main details of the life of the first woman to ride a Melbourne Cup winner – nine siblings, all equally as horse-mad thanks to their single dad (Sam Neill) and their horse farm upbringing, a life-long obsession with riding despite the horse-racing death of one of her sisters and a near-fatal accident herself – the one question it never comes close to answering is the only question that matters: why? 

Teresa Palmer as Michelle Payne is always convincing – though not as convincing as Stevie Payne, who plays her brother Stevie Payne – and the story often hits the right notes on a scene-by-scene basis as she battles the odds and entrenched sexism (which this film doesn't dig into as much as you might have expected - it often feels like it's tip-toeing around issues to keep the racing industry on-side) to make her dream come true. But Payne herself remains something of a cypher, a character whose fierce drive is taken for granted and never examined or explained. Without that human element, this is just a list of her real-life achievements, and no matter how well they’re told the story remains hollow at heart.

There’s been a lot of horror at the movies aimed at kids (well, older kids) in recent years, but Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark is the first high profile film to admit what’s been obvious for a while now: if you leave out the gore (and the sex, but every mainstream movie leaves out the sex these days), horror movies are suitable for all ages. Based on a popular but infamous series of children’s books which retold a series of generic horror tales, this adds a framing device involving a dead girl, a haunted house, a book that writes itself (“you don’t read the book… the book reads you”) and a late 60s setting that’s solidly realised but doesn’t really add much to the scares beyond a lot of mentions of Richard Nixon and Vietnam. 

The four teens who accidentally stumble onto the evil book and unleash its power are good in that Stranger Things / It way that seems to be the default for horror at the moment, while the actual scary scenes where the monsters come out to play are universally well done, featuring both creepy imagery and decent jump scares. Yes, the sequel door is left open; there’s plenty more scary stories to tell.

- Anthony Morris

Review: Rambo: Last Blood

I guess Rambo turning into a fully-fledged horror movie monster was only a matter of time. There's really no other way he could operate: he's clearly no longer a realistic threat to any halfway competent bad guy, let alone the entire Mexican Sex Cartel (but more on that in a moment). But as some kind of messed-up Bogeyman, a near-supernatural murder machine driven entirely by the need for vengeance? Yeah, that'll work.

It's been however many years it needs to be for the story to work since John Rambo (Sylvester Stallone) came home to the family farm. Now he spends his days training horses and looking on admiringly at his housekeeper's granddaughter Gabrielle (Yvette Monreal) like she was some kind of machete or other instrument of death. Because, just in case the maze of tunnels he's dug under the farm filled with guns didn't give it away, Rambo has Become War and all this family crap is barely keeping a lid on it.

Then Gabrielle announces she can't go to university until she goes to Mexico to try and find her father, which Rambo knows is a bad move from watching Sicario or any one of countless other films where Mexico is hell on earth. Long story short, she goes south of the border, discovers her real father is a dirtbag and gets grabbed by the Mexican Sex Cartel. Looks like Rambo has some work to do.

What separates this from every other Taken knock off of the last fifteen years is that Rambo, who is roughly a billion years old now and has nothing to lose, is totally, 100% willing to Go There. "There" being a place where every single act of violence - and there are oh so many acts of violence in this film - is treated like it belongs in a horror movie. It's basically Taken if the woman being kidnapped was related to Jason Voorhees from the Friday the 13th films, which sounds like a joke until you see Rambo reach into a guy's shoulder, grab his collarbone, tear his collarbone from his body and then snap it. And the movie still has an hour to go.

For a fair while now horror movies have been moving in on action movie's turf. Most home invasion films eventually reach a point where the good guys fight back; the most recent Halloween movie was basically Michael Myers vs Sarah Connor. Rambo: Last Blood is the other half of that trend, an action movie that turns into a horror film.

Sure, the bad guys here have done bad things and deserve to die. But they deserve to be gunned down in a generic gun battle or maybe - if they're particularly vile - they might require an up-close stabbing for audiences to feel like justice has been served. You know what they don't require? Falling into a pit, getting impaled on spikes, then having Rambo shoot them so their head explodes. Entire movies have built up to scenes of horror that here are just throw away moments (in one case involving a severed head, literally). War might be Hell, but Hell is going to have its work cut out for it to top the suffering these guys go through.

Stallone, who at this stage of his career is almost entirely charisma free but can still write a competent grindhouse script, does at least remember to give Rambo a scene where he gets his arse kicked so all this violence is slightly justified. It's almost possible if you squint to imagine that the idea here is that, now that Rambo is clearly too old to beat anyone in hand-to-hand combat, turning his farm into a Death Farm is his way to even the odds. But the level of violence is so excessive, so startlingly extreme, that none of that matters. Does anything matter?

This ends with a montage of highlights from Rambo's on-screen adventures, including a number of  clips from the movie we just saw. It's like the film is desperately trying to reassure us that what we just saw really is part of the Rambo story, that the flag-waving Reagan-era commie-killing hero really does now live in a hole where he spends his days hacking off criminals' faces with a machete.

There's probably a statement in there somewhere about America.

- Anthony Morris